INEQUALITY UNDERMINES EDUCATION FOR DETROIT KIDS, PART 3

“The case is on appeal before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is part of a historic struggle dating back to slavery to resist the attempt to subordinate and disenfranchise communities of color by depriving their children access to basic instruction and tools of learning.”

By Mark Rosenbaum

Nearly all of the students in Detroit are children of color from low income families, in relation to their counterparts in affluent districts like Grosse Pointe, Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills.

The state of Michigan and Governor Rick Snyder, defendants in the litigation, have aggressively defended the conditions described against legal challenge and asserted that no such constitutional right or claim for equality of access exists under the United States Constitution.

They have stated that comparisons should not be made to schools serving primarily affluent communities. Going even further, the state argued that it had no responsibility for any of the conditions in Detroit schools. In papers filed in federal court, the state attributed the low proficiency outcomes of Detroit students to factors including the “intellectual limitations” of the children, “domestic violence” and lack of parental concern.

The case is on appeal before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is part of a historic struggle dating back to slavery to resist the attempt to subordinate and disenfranchise communities of color by depriving their children access to basic instruction and tools of learning. Nearly four decades ago, the Supreme Court spoke of the “stigma of illiteracy,” stating that “it will mark [children] the rest of their lives” and cause an “inestimable toll…on the social economic, intellectual, and psychological well-being of the individual.”

A true champion of this struggle, Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, recently stated that “There is a racist element to what has happened. Children in Detroit have been treated like second-class citizens.”

Deliberately so.

The author, Mark Rosenbaum, a distinguished civil rights lawyer, who represented Cesar Chavez in the 1970s and assisted Coretta Scott King on some legal matters, is the lead counsel in the ongoing Detroit’s right to literacy case that is currently before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.He is director of the Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law . This is a three-part series on education Mr. Rosenbaum is writing for The PuLSE Institute for greater public awareness about the issue of inequality and poverty facing Detroit school kids.

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The PuLSE Institute (Institute for Public Leadership and Social Equity) is a Detroit based independent non-partisan anti-poverty think tank, committed to deep analysis of the broad spectrum of inequality issues affecting people.